the same combined star
power. Linnet, a rich
socialite with a lot of
enemies, is played
by Gal Gadot; her
recently acquired
husband, Simon, is
Armie Hammer; and
also on board are Letitia
Wright, Russell Brand and the
reunited double act Dawn
French and Jennifer Saunders.
Branagh uses a glitzy yet
unsubtle style when directing
his Christie movies that works
best when the performances
are suitably big and colourful.
That need is most evident in
the scenes where Poirot
interviews the murder suspects
one by one. As far as screen
presence is concerned, some
of this film’s actors don’t
stand up well to interrogation.
Still, that gaudy style —
combined with the melodrama
of the script’s modified take
on Christie’s plot — remains
diverting even if some of the
supposedly EgyptianVery little about Jonas Poher
Rasmussen’s Oscar-nominated
documentary Flee is what it
seems. The film tells the story
of a gay Afghan man named
Amin Nawabi who in the 1980s
fled Afghanistan for Russia
before finally finding
sanctuary in Denmark, but
Amin is not his real name. Nor
does he appear before the
cameras, because he did not
want to be filmed, so instead
his story is animated much
like Persepolis: clean, unfussy
strokes and washes of colour
that turn his story into a
heartbreaking odyssey.
He told the Danish
authorities on his arrival that
he was an orphan, as his
trafficker had told him to do,
but his fabrications cloak a far
more compelling, human
story. What in a conventional
documentary might have
caused problems allows this
animated film to take wing.
A friend of Amin’s since
high school, where he grew
curious about the shy new
boy, Rasmussen interviews his
friend as an adult, patiently
coaxing his story out in
sessions with more than a hint
of the confessional. “I was a
little bit different,” says Amin,
who from an early age nurses
a crush on Jean-Claude Van
Everyone who has seen
Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 film of
Murder on the Orient Express
remembers his Hercule Poirot
for his extraordinary
moustache: two bushy
tendrils of face foliage. The
detective returns in Branagh’s
adaptation of another Agatha
Christie novel, Death on the
Nile, and his ’tache now has
an origin story. The new film’s
prologue is set amid the First
World War and reveals that
the clean-shaven young Poirot
altered his appearance toconceal a battle
wound’s nasty scar.
It’s as if the movie
is trying to shame all
of us who poked fun
at those enormous
handlebars. You
were mocking the
afflicted! Hope you can
live with yourselves! Perhaps,
though, the mockery taught
Branagh a lesson. When the
film jumps to 1937 and begins
its murder mystery tale,
Poirot’s moustache is smaller
than in the previous movie.
It’s still substantial, but it no
longer catches your eye every
time it enters a shot.
That’s one reduction that
pays off, but the other marked
difference between the two
films is not as welcome. The
passengers on Branagh’s
Orient Express outing
included Judi Dench, Johnny
Depp, Willem Dafoe and
Penélope Cruz. Those
gathered for the sequel’s
cruise up the Nile don’t haveA cartoon
to break the
hardest heart
Victims of an Egy
Controversial stars
taint Kenneth
Branagh’s corny
whodunnit. By
Edward Porter
THE
CRITICS
Flee
Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 15,
89 min HHHH
Death on the Nile
Kenneth Branagh, 12A, 127 min
HHHTOM
SHONE
Damme and dances in his
sister’s nightgowns to A-ha’s
Take on Me.
They didn’t even have a
word for “gay” in Afghanistan.
The West seems to call him
with its junk, filling his
dreams and injecting tiny hits
of pathos into his story. After
his father is abducted and
killed, Amin’s family flee the
Taliban on a tourist visa to
Moscow, where they are
marooned for years, dodging
the city’s corrupt police force.
His sisters are smuggled to
Sweden, before Amin makes
his own attempt to head west.
Trudging through a snowy
Estonian forest at night, the
Reebok sneakers of the boy
ahead of him almost give the
game away with their flashing,
luminescent heels.
Rich in such vivid detail,
the film comes most alive
when tracking these
harrowing moments of
passage. What the
impressionistic, rotoscoped
animation style manages to
convey is the unending
insecurity of the refugees’
position. All homes are
temporary and everything
can be turned upside down
again with a knock on the
door. “I felt nothing but
embarrassment and shame at
our position,” Amin says, after
they are stopped in the Gulf of
Finland in an overcrowded
boat, passing a cruise ship
filled with tourists who gawp.
We see him in adult life,
attempting to make a home
for himself with his Danish
husband, Kasper, but being
uprooted so many times
makes him shy about settling
down. Reuniting with his
sisters secretly in Sweden, he
lives in constant fear of being
found out and sent back.
What distinguishes
Rasmussen’s remarkable film
is its marriage of stark visuals
and psychological sensitivity.
National boundaries are just
lines on a map, it suggests; the
only worlds that matter are
those inside us. cNew
home
Amin and
Kasper in
FleeFILM